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Musical Advent Calendar App

A new day, a new piece of classical music – FREE!
Naxos’s new musical app for Advent features 25 complete tracks behind numbered doors. Each day, a new door is ‘unlocked’ to reveal a new piece of seasonal music from Naxos’s classical music catalogue.

Born in Baku, Kara Karayev was one of Dmitry Shostakovich’s most distinguished pupils. Karayev absorbed his teacher’s influence, binding it to his own distinctive use of native Azerbaijani folk melodies and harmonies to produce music in an eclectic range of genres. The Seven Beauties is the first full-length Azerbaijani ballet, and the suite heard here brims with an exotic array of appealing rhythms and melodies. The Path of Thunder uses elements of African and Afro-American music in its exploration of the theme of forbidden love in apartheid era South Africa. Karayev’s Symphony No. 3 and other orchestral works can be heard on 8.570720.

A strong opponent of oppression in all its forms, Leonardo Balada met Martin Luther King in 1967. His Sinfonía en Negro is a powerful response to King’s subsequent murder as well as a description of the black people’s journey in the Americas from slavery to freedom. Both the Sinfonía and the virtuoso Double Concerto use Balada’s pioneering blend of ethnic music with avant-garde techniques, while Columbus: Images for Orchestra is a free adaptation of four contrasting scenes from his acclaimed opera Christopher Columbus (8.660237-38). In 2007 Leonardo Balada won an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters which helped to make this recording possible.

Saverio Mercadante was one of Italy’s ground-breaking composers in the development of opera, admired by contemporaries such as Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi. But during the years 1814 to 1820, inspired by fellow conservatoire students and their virtuoso teachers, he embarked on a series of works for the flute. They include seven concertos, happy exceptions to the rule in opera-obsessed Italy of the day. The solo writing is vividly characterised, full of technical demands perfectly adapted to the instrument’s then more limited capabilities and permeated with a rich bel canto lyricism.

This is the first of three volumes including rare and recently discovered works by Heitor Villa-Lobos. Guitarist Andrea Bissoli’s researches have revealed new sources for lost manuscripts, and these recordings of the Valsa, the Motivos Gregos and Canção do poeta do século XVIII represent the revival of music thought to have vanished forever. These works are joined by transcriptions which include one of Villa-Lobos’ best loved melodies, the Ária from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, as well as the Concerto he wrote for the legendary Segovia.

Morale was low in Vienna after the suppression of the 1848 revolution, but Johann Strauss the Elder’s celebratory ball in January 1849 provided new waltzes which “were heard to general applause and were excellent”. This final volume of the complete Johann Strauss I edition includes the enigmatic Quadrille Without Title, and the celebration of a hero hailed alongside Radetzky in the Jelačić March. The Exeter Polka and Almack’s Quadrille were an introduction to London society, while the Radetzky Banquet March was left incomplete at the time of the composer’s death.

This week’s posting appears on December 6, which happens to be my birthday, so a few observations about music loosely associated with that thought might be in order. December 6 also carries the significance of being St Nicholas’ Day. St Nicholas, the patron saint of choristers, was the devout Christian Bishop of Myra who, so legend records, was revered for his care of the poor and his love for the young; he was also the inspiration for the tradition of Father Christmas. He died on December 6, AD 343, and his humility is still commemorated each year in cathedrals during the Ceremony of the Boy Bishop.